Secret Plans and Clever Tricks
by fringeperson
Summary: ONESHOT. DO NOT OWN. COMPLETE. Quinn had forgotten about half the stuff she had bought over the years on Jake's credit card. Daria decided she would use that to her advantage.


If there was one way, absolutely guaranteed, to get Jake Morgandorffer to burst a blood vessel, it was to talk about money, in the large amounts and on the negative side of the balance book. It was with this in mind that Daria instituted her own brand new policy of "less is more". It ran very simply. Less money was equal to more stuff, and less stuff was equal to more money. Of course, the "stuff" category also included debt, but her father had, so far, managed to pay for Quinn's shopping trips with only one rupture. Besides, Daria was doing the whole family a favour as she subtly began to institute this new policy.

Every Saturday that Quinn had a date, Daria slipped into the overly pink and frilly room, tip-toed her way to the closet, and removed something. It didn't matter much what, but she carefully picked things that she was certain Quinn wouldn't miss – that is to say, things she had bought long enough ago she had probably forgotten about them. This item she then carefully photographed and folded, then put up for sale over the internet.

As a small support for her father, she carefully divided the money from the sales and deposited a third into his bank account. Admittedly, Quinn would probably just spend it before their father even noticed the money had gone in, but Daria figured that if it spared her another trip into some national park where they would try to be one with nature, and just end up high on berries, then it was worth it.

Besides, she kept the other two thirds for herself.

"Has Quinn noticed yet?" Jane asked from behind her canvas as Daria lay upside down on her bed and watched Sick Sad World.

"Noticed?" Daria returned, wanting to be certain exactly _which_ diabolical scheme Jane was referring to. After all, Jane _could_ have been asking about the channel blocking they had carefully constructed against the fashion channel last night.

"That she's always one shirt or skirt less after her Saturday dates," Jane specified, a delighted and malicious smirk on her red painted lips.

"No." Daria deadpanned. "She buys clothes faster than I sell them again, but that works out for me just fine, and before you ask, I haven't tried selling any of her panties to internet perverts yet. Even I draw the line somewhere."

"So sell them to her fan club, or Upchuck," Jane suggested.

"Don't tempt me."

"Oh yes, speaking of temptations... _Trent_ and the rest of the guys in the band have invited us to their gig at some new night club in town on Friday night. We'll get free entry and backstage passes as their nominated guests," Jane said, trying to make it sound both completely normal and like a once-in-a-lifetime offer at the same time.

"How, when and why did this happen?" Daria questioned, sitting up to fix her spectacled gaze on her artistic friend.

"No idea, but Trent asked me if I thought you'd like to come when he told me he got the gig. He promised free passes if we wanted them, and I promised to ask you," Jane answered with a shrug. "I'm tellin' ya Daria, that boy has it bad for you when Monique isn't there to cloud his judgement with her boobs and piercings."

Daria fell back onto the bed with a sigh.

"If you promise to shut up about that, then I'll agree to go. Do you know if this club has a dress code? According to my vapid and quite loud sibling, most clubs do," Daria said, wondering if there was some way she could trick a bunch of LHS fools into going, and making the opening night, at the very least, successful. Hell, she'd pay if she could watch Quinn be turned away at the door, not that she ever would be.

"I get the feeling it's a kind of high-end, deep goth and punk kind of place," Jane answered. "So you might want to try something that will make your mother scream," she added with a smirk.

"I think I may also go for my contacts," Daria said, a terribly cruel idea forming in her mind.

Jane spotted the small, devious smile on her usually stoic friend's face.

"What are you thinking of Daria?" she enquired, setting down her paint brush and turning away from the canvas.

"I'm not sure that I want to tell you," the auburn haired girl answered, her small smile spreading as she sat up. "But rest assured, it will be worth waiting to find out."

That night, after Quinn had left for her Wednesday night date, Daria slipped into the pink and frilly room, made her way to the closet, and began seeking out things that were black, dark red, and deep purple. Her sister, being the conscientious natural carrot-top that she was, didn't have many red clothes, but black, deep purple, and even something in a nice royal blue could be found easily. Further more, she had pulled them out of the farthest corner of Quinn's closet, the part where she shoved stuff she didn't wear as much any more.

Her collection in hand, Daria snuck back to her own room. There, she laid out the different pieces and tried arranging them until she liked the way that they looked. The extra pieces she returned to their hangars in Quinn's room. As much as Daria knew Quinn wouldn't notice one or two pieces going missing now and then, taking all of her black clothes and a few of her other darker coloured things, _at the same time _– that she might notice.

Outfit chosen, Daria hid it in a plastic bag in the top of her closet. She didn't want it to get mixed up with the clothes she was hiding under her bed, waiting for the payment to come through before posting.

Her next stop was the garage, or more accurately, the boxes within. Opening the fifth box, Daria smiled as she found what she was looking for.

"Daria!" Jake called up the stairs on Friday night. "Jane is here!"

"Coming!" she yelled back down.

"So, you girls going out tonight?" Jake asked Jane politely. He may have been an unobservant man, but even he noticed that something about the way Jane looked was a bit different.

She was still in red and black, but she'd traded out for a silky red singlet top and a very short thing that looked like a black skirt, but was shorts underneath. Fishnet stockings covered her legs before they disappeared – as they always did – into her boots. For warmth, Jane had a red, knee-length vinyl jacket that her sister Penny had left behind once, which she was wearing now so as not to disturb the parental units of her best friend _too_ much.

"Yeah, me and Daria are going to a club that my brother's got a gig at. He said he'd get us in free, and it's not like we have anything else to do on a Friday night in Lawndale," Jane answered, shrugging. She saw no reason to lie to Jake. He was an alright guy, if a bit highly strung, and he liked Trent, which was always a point to any parent as far as Jane was concerned.

"What time do you think you'll be back?" he asked.

"Tomorrow," Daria said as she came down the stairs, a backpack over her shoulder and no glasses on her face. "I cleared it with you and Mum already Dad. I'm staying over at Jane's house tonight."

Jane raised an eyebrow at the very black trench coat Daria was wearing that came down to her ankles, her boots peeking out the bottom, but said nothing.

"Oh yeah! Well, have fun tonight kiddo!" Jake said happily, waving to the girls before closing the door.

The door man – the one who was there to escort VIPs – showed Jane and Daria to the lounge. He also handed them lanyards to wear which gave them free passage throughout the club – apart from the staff only areas of course, and politely offered to take their coats for them.

Jane took hers off first, and Daria wondered if she should have been worried that her friend owned such clothes, but then, she had also seen Jane dressed up to look conventional, and that had been far more terrifying.

When Daria removed her coat, she was revealed to be wearing a black sleeveless turtle-neck, a dark red mini skirt that didn't quite cover her rear, and black leather pants which bootlegged slightly. There were also a pair of silver bands around Daria's upper arms, and before she handed over her trench coat she took a pair of arm warmers with an elastic ring to slip around her middle finger from on of the pockets, putting them on once she no longer held the coat.

"Where did you get all this stuff?" Jane asked, slightly awed.

"The clothes came from Quinn's closet, though I doubt she remembers buying most of it. The rest came from a box I found in the garage. I knew I'd find some of Mum's old kinky stuff if I dug deep enough," Daria answered, slipping the lanyard that marked her as VIP around her neck.

Jane eyed her friend up and down for a few moments.

"You'll send all the guys you aren't interested in my way, right?" she asked at last.

The two friends moved out to the dance floor together, but stood just off it, merely swaying gently to the sounds of Mystic Spiral songs that must have been written between landing the gig and performing tonight, and been practised. They sounded _good_.

When the band finished their first set, a DJ came out and started playing songs by more widely known goth and punk bands, and Daria and Jane went back to the VIP lounge where they would join the band for drinks.

"Woah!"

Daria was surprised – though Jane wasn't – when that single, expressive word left Trent's mouth as he looked up from the small spread of food and saw locked eyes with her.

"Hey Jane," Jesse said, looking up as well. "I thought you said you were bringing Daria, who's this?"

"This _is_ Daria, you great lummox," Jane answered. "She's just not wearing her glasses."

"Oh. Hey, have you tried this stuff? It's really great," Jesse said, moving on. His attention returned firmly to food.

Jane left Daria's side to grab some of the food before the band ate it all.

Trent however, left the table for Daria until he was standing less than a foot in front of her. "You look hot, Daria," he said, a smile on his face.

"Um, thanks," she mumbled, unsure. "You too," she added, very aware that Trent was wearing black slacks and a dark top rather than his usual torn grey jeans and faded green T-shirt.

"I'm really glad Janey could convince you to come tonight Daria. How did you like the new material we played?"

"Um... I liked the one about the blushing moon and the black koi swimming around by itself in a pond full of goldfish," Daria said.

"I'm really glad Daria," said Trent, smiling. "I wrote that one for you."

Daria visibly startled, causing Trent to laugh a little.

"Maybe it's a bit unclear, but that was a love song Daria," the musician whispered, brushing his lips against her ear as he did so and sliding one calloused hand over her bare shoulder. "Just for you, from me."

Daria blushed, but she was also smiling.

When she returned home the next day, she couldn't help but smile once more as Jake discovered that, miraculously, there was more money in the bank than he had anticipated. Letting Quinn spot her as she entered her room, Daria smiled again as her fashion-obsessed younger sibling demanded to know what she had been thinking, going out wearing _that_, as she gestured to her own clothes and some of their mother's jewellery, not that she knew, obviously.


End file.
